I met with Sonus Networks' Mykola Konrad, Director, Enterprise Management at ITEXPO today. It's not every day that I get to meet someone who formerly worked on the Microsoft Surface product, a very cool technology. It's basically an extra-large iPad and Mykola mentioned Microsoft was considering something like the iPad two years ago.

Anyway, back to Sonus, Mykola talked about some of their products, including the GSX9000. One feature it offers is the ability for non-VoIP digital phones to register to their ASX (SIP registrar). This then allows UC platforms such as Microsoft OCS/Lync to communicate to the GSX9000, thus allowing legacy TDM infrastructure to be UC-enabled. The other big new feature is what they call "fixed smart phone convergence", which allows you to use a single dialed number (DN), which can call your desk phone, your softphone, and your iPhone or Android SIP-based softphone.

I should point out that usually, with traditional IP-PBXs, you can only use SIP credentials one time. If you attempt to logon with the same credentials, it boots the other device off - usually for 300s (5 minutes) when the phone does a SIP re-register and then it boots the other device off. Sonus's feature is very similar to Counterpath's single number identity, which I recently wrote about and they were just granted a patent for this. It'll be interesting to see if there is patent overlap.

Sonus earned $250 million in revenue last year and has 900 employees. Traditionally selling into the carrier space, interestingly, they are now selling into large enterprises to allow integration / interoperability with IP-PBXs in multiple locations. Because it's the same software used in the carrier space, it's already been hardened and tested against every possible phone system, ensuring high interoperability. Obviously, the large enterprises don't need the Class 4 or Class 5 features, nor do they need to pay for them, so Sonus offers a flexible licensing structure to enable/disable various features.

Mykola said their latest Session Border Controller (SBC) can do 64,000 simultaneous sessions/s with no transcoding and up to and 14,400 sessions/second with transcoding.

I met with Sonus Networks' Mykola Konrad, Director, Enterprise Management at ITEXPO today. It's not every day that I get to meet someone who formerly worked on the Microsoft Surface product, a very cool technology. It's basically an extra-large iPad and Mykola mentioned Microsoft was considering something like the iPad two years ago.

Anyway, back to Sonus, Mykola talked about some of their products, including the GSX9000. One feature it offers is the ability for non-VoIP digital phones to register to their ASX (SIP registrar). This then allows UC platforms such as Microsoft OCS/Lync to communicate to the GSX9000, thus allowing legacy TDM infrastructure to be UC-enabled. The other big new feature is what they call \"fixed smart phone convergence\", which allows you to use a single dialed number (DN), which can call your desk phone, your softphone, and your iPhone or Android SIP-based softphone.

I should point out that usually, with traditional IP-PBXs, you can only use SIP credentials one time. If you attempt to logon with the same credentials, it boots the other device off - usually for 300s (5 minutes) when the phone does a SIP re-register and then it boots the other device off. Sonus's feature is very similar to Counterpath's single number identity, which I recently wrote about and they were just granted a patent for this. It'll be interesting to see if there is patent overlap.

Sonus earned \$250 million in revenue last year and has 900 employees. Traditionally selling into the carrier space, interestingly, they are now selling into large enterprises to allow integration / interoperability with IP-PBXs in multiple locations. Because it's the same software used in the carrier space, it's already been hardened and tested against every possible phone system, ensuring high interoperability. Obviously, the large enterprises don't need the Class 4 or Class 5 features, nor do they need to pay for them, so Sonus offers a flexible licensing structure to enable/disable various features.

Mykola said their latest Session Border Controller (SBC) can do 64,000 simultaneous sessions/s with no transcoding and up to and 14,400 sessions/second with transcoding.